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It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the heard-that-before dept.

edmicman notes that "Wired has an article, "Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up", that calls for the greater programming community to create a truly "open" social network. Specifically, the problems with today's networks, says the author, is that their content is not available to everyone."

4 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. 6 Billion users.... by pthor1231 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wasn't aware almost everyone in the world had internet access....

  2. Re:knock yourself out by pthor1231 · · Score: 5, Informative
    After reading the article, it really looks like it's just this guy whining about being really lazy.

    Therein lies the rub. When entering data into Facebook, you're sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.

    Honestly, how hard is it to sign up for a facebook account now. You don't even need a school email, just an email. Everyone could have access if they wanted to, in about 5 minutes.

  3. Re:knock yourself out by PFI_Optix · · Score: 3, Informative

    Facebook and Myspace allow you to share content with unregistered users. They also allow you to restrict it so that only your friends can see it. This is a good thing.

    I think the only thing networking sites could do to be more "open" is to become interoperable: Allow Facebook users to add MySpace users as friends. Of course, that sounds like it would be a royal PITA and would require a whole new standard be developed, but hey...open is good, right?

    There's nothing wrong with things as they are today. If you want to make your information public, get a blog. If you want to share something with just a few friends, use whatever networking site they use.

    --
    120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
  4. Re:I don't want EVERYONE to see my data!! by fastest+fascist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sir, get thee a Clue.

    Either you didn't read the article, or your reading comprehension needs serious work. The author was NOT calling for a network where all information is freely available to everyone, simply an open framework within which people can network as they please. It's kind of like IRC versus a web-based chatroom on a website - IRC is an open framework, anyone can make an IRC client that will work with any IRC server, but that doesn't mean users can't form private channels or choose who they communicate with. Similarly, there is no reason an open framework for a social network would require you to give up the ability to have distinct, closed cliques within the open system. You could, however, reuse any profile data you put in for as many different groups in as many different configurations as you like, without having to sign up for and maintain your presence on a multitude of different, specialized social networking services. You'd just need one login for one service, or maybe one login for a master network which you could allow any independent service to access to retrieve your data as you see fit.